IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

Korea's Vice Minister of Government Administration and Home Affairs Choi Yang-sik met with his Chinese counterpart Chen Dawei in Beijing. The two agreed to actively share information and knowledge, including exchanging public sector human resources and tapping into private sector know-how of systems development.

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Election Commission (NEC) have announced their plans to develop a blockchain-based online voting system.

This was first reported by ZDNet. According to the official release, the new system leverages blockchain technology for storing and verifying voting results. It will go on trial in the private sector in December.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on April 27 that a total of 111 cases have been received from 39 countries in international competitions for the "K-City Network Global Cooperation Program."

This program is designed to help South Korean companies develop plans by discovering overseas smart city businesses and supporting South Korean companies' overseas expansion.

For nearly as long as there have been cities, there have been efforts to create ideal cities. The Italian Renaissance saw the birth of places like Pienza and Palmanova, exquisitely planned centers that were monuments to humanistic thinking. In the 20th century, Brazil's Brasilia and India's Chandigarh fused political goals with avant-garde architecture. The dream seems ever constant: to fashion that fresh start, to build a living prototype that will inspire the world.

Officials from the Domestic Policy Strategy Agency (BSKDN) of the Home Affairs Ministry embarked on a visit to South Korea to learn how to improve the implementation of smart governance at the national level.

BSKDN head Yusharto Huntoyungo informed that the official visit is a strategic step aimed at exploring innovation and best practices pertaining to smart government implemented by the South Korean government.

The government is seeking to explore more viable collaborations that tie up digital possibilities

In Summary

• President William Ruto had announced that his government will construct 200,000 houses annually under the affordable housing programme.
• Real estate industry's contribution to Kenya's economic growth stood at 6.7% as of December 2021, making it an important player in the country’s GDP.

It’s a crowning achievement for S. Korea striving to export e-government systems through software consulting services.

Korea IT Consulting, a leading e-government consulting firm in S. Korea, has clinched an e-government EA (Enterprise Architecture) deal from the government of Botswana, a land-locked country situated in southern Africa.

In an official gazette released on September 15 by the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB), the Botswanan government announced that Korea IT Consulting was selected as the winner of the “Professional Services for the Development of an e-Government Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture” project, initiated by the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Botswana. The project is worth 10 billion won.

Saudi Arabia and South Korea have announced the establishment of a ministerial level committee to boost cooperation, enhance business networking and ensure sustainable support for the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 economic reforms.

The Saudi-Korea Vision 2030 Committee “focuses on supporting business ventures between the two countries,” Youngjae Kim, diplomat and negotiator at Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Saudi Arabia, told Arab News on Tuesday.

Generational shifts in the corporate world and the grim reality of the Korean software market

Global household names, such as Citygroup, General Electric (GE), Bank of America, AIG, HSBC Group, Exxon Mobil, BP and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which used to dominate the list of the world’s top 10 global companies a decade ago, had been dethroned by global software titans (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.) a long time ago. There is even talk of a near future ruled by Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi.

The same is true of the smartphone market. iPhone, which reigned supreme in the global smartphone market has lost out to Samsung Electronics, the maker of Galaxy S smartphones. Now Samsung finds itself being closely chased by China’s Xiaomi.

South Korea has agreed to fund with $13 million efforts made by Hue to turn itself into a smart cultural and tourism city.

The funding will be routed through the South Korea International Cooperation Agency (Koica).

It will be used to implement a five-year (2021-2025), $14.8 million project. With Koica, a government agency that specializes in implementing non-refundable aid programs for developing countries, providing $13 million, the rest will comprise counterpart funding from the central province of Thua Thien-Hue, of which Hue is the capital.

South Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning is revealing the secrets of its successful digital transformation to developing countries. This is in the framework of world Bank Democracy Development Program (DDP) forum held in Seoul on October 15-19, 2018. The forum that gathers 40 representatives of 25 countries including some people from the Smart Africa Alliance countries, will provide developing countries with an opportunity to learn from South Korea and realize their development via ICT.

Thanks to strategic public-private partnerships and an aggressive Technology policy, South Korea has been one of the most advanced countries in terms of digital governance for many years now. In the 2018 E-Government Development Index (EGDI), the United Nations ranked it as the third, after Denmark and Australia. Its telecommunication infrastructures development rate, online services, and citizens participation online are high.

South Korea’s smart city Sejong will be establishing a blockchain-based identity verification platform for self-driving vehicles.

The government of South Korea’s planned city Sejong — which is the country’s testing ground for major smart city solutions — announced Friday that it will be establishing a blockchain-based platform for storing and verifying the digital identities of self-driving vehicles.

An Asian news outlet, Aju Business Daily, reported that South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT along with the country’s internet technology watchdog, Korea Internet & Security Agency, will be leading the development of the identity management and verification platform.

A city in in South Korea is developing an identification and verification platform for autonomous vehicles on the blockchain. Sejong City will use blockchain to protect the data generated by the self-driving vehicles, in a bid to give data credibility.

The Sejong City government will turn to blockchain technology to verify and protect digital identities of the self-driving vehicles, according to a report by South Korean outlet Aju Business Daily. It has partnered with the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Internet and Security Agency. The budget for the project stands at 1 billion won ($817,000) and it’s expected to commence in 2021.

With its excellent geographical location for trade and economic development and the potential to become the country’s leading agricultural hub, Long An Province is ideal for developing a smart urban area, according to experts.

Lê Thành, director of the Institute of Organic Agricultural Economics, said as a gateway connecting HCM City and the Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta and with its excellent transport system, it has everything required to become an agricultural - industrial smart urban area.

The Global e-Government Forum (GeGF) 2013, a conference for global e-government leaders and a global event designed to spread the so-called “administrative Hallyu (or the Korean wave)” to the rest of the world, has kicked off with a fanfare at KINTEX, Ilsan, with 300 guests from abroad (including 25 high-ranking, ministerial-level government officials from 50 nations) and approximately 700 domestic participants in attendance.

South Korean technology company LG CNS has been named preferred bidder to provide the digital systems for a pilot “smart city” in South Korea that among other things will monitor the health of residents.

The pilot is a precursor for the $4.2bn smart city planned on a 280ha greenfield site west of the city of Busan, called Busan Eco Delta Smart City.

Wie Korea IT News berichtet, haben die koreanischen Behörden in Städten und Provinzregierungen Anfang des Jahres begonnen, auf Linux zu wechseln. Die koreanische IT-Industrie-Förderungs-Behörde (KIPA) will allein in diesem Jahr rund eintausend IT-Projekte auf Linux umstellen. Dies wird ein Drittel aller Projekte dieses Jahres ausmachen. Zudem soll ein Technologie-Zentrum eingerichtet werden, um Support für Linux zu leisten. Dies soll aus einer Portal-Seite und einem Call-Center bestehen.

Fifty-four families volunteered to share data on everything from sleeping habits to trash volume to help developers make a city from scratch in Busan.

For Ms Lee Song-lee, a 30-year-old resident of South Korea’s first “smart city” experiment, the mirror in her family’s living room is not just for smoothing her hair on her way out the door.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on June 23 that this year’s K-City Network Global Cooperation Program would be initiated in 11 selected out of 39 applicant countries.

The program based on intergovernmental cooperation is to help cities adopt South Korea’s smart city models and provide relevant support. The program started last year, when 12 cities in the 11 countries, including Indonesia and Peru, were selected.